Judge Orders US Officials to Preserve Signal Messages

A watchdog sued the defense secretary and other officials.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington on March 16, 2023. Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via AP

A federal judge on March 27 ordered government officials to try to preserve their Signal messages about an attack on terrorists in the Middle East earlier this month.

“Defendants shall promptly make best efforts to preserve all Signal communications from March 11–15, 2025,” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said in a minute order.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials, who were part of a chat group on messaging platform Signal discussing the attack, must file a status report by March 31 on steps they’ve taken to preserve the messages, the judge said.

The order will expire on April 10 “in the event that Defendants’ measures are satisfactory to the Court,” Boasberg wrote.

The order was handed down after a hearing involving government lawyers and the watchdog group American Oversight, which sued the officials this week over their recently disclosed chat on Signal.

The mid-March discussion on Signal involved Hegseth, Secretary of State and acting Archivist Marco Rubio, and others. It centered on strikes in the Middle East against Houthi terrorists. Its existence was revealed after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added.

American Oversight said in its complaint, which was filed in federal court in Washington, that Signal is not authorized to preserve federal records, and at least one message sent in the recent chat was deleted, in violation of the Federal Records Act.

American Oversight earlier this year submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to agencies headed by the defendants, including the Pentagon, seeking Signal records. Because the messages are not forwarded to official email accounts, American Oversight and other requesters are barred from obtaining the records, the suit states.

An attorney for the government told the judge during the hearing that the government was “certainly looking to fulfill its obligations” in regard to the chats.

The attorney also said the agencies were looking to preserve the records they have, and that an order by the judge was unnecessary because the government was already working toward that goal.

She cautioned that the government was still in the process of determining which messages it possesses.

U.S. government lawyers had said in a filing to the judge that American Oversight’s allegation that officials have not taken measures to prevent the destruction of Signal messages, and are therefore violating the Federal Records Act, is not reviewable by the court under court precedent.

“Even if the claim were reviewable, it is belied by Defendants’ declaration submitted herewith. That declaration establishes that Defendants are taking steps to locate and preserve the Signal chat, and that at least one of the agencies has located, preserved, and copied into a federal record keeping system a partial version of the Signal chat,” they said.

The case was assigned to Boasberg, who recently blocked the government from deporting suspected and confirmed members of the Tren de Aragua gang under a wartime law that President Donald Trump invoked unless authorities had other reasons for the deportations.

The assignment was random, according to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Stacy Robinson contributed to this report.